TL;DR:

  • Ionic Appflow, the cloud build solution for Mobile App built with Capacitor is on the death-row. (Got bought so yay for investors, but bye bye cool tool)
  • Replacements: Voltbuilder, CodeMagic or bitwise
  • Side note: probably a smart move to use Expo

Appflow who?

First point to cover: What is (was) Appflow for Capacitor?

Appflow for Capacitor used tp refers to the integration of Ionic Appflow with apps built using Capacitor. It enabled features such as:

  1. Cloud Builds:

    • Build native binaries (iOS `.ipa`, Android `.apk`/`.aab`) in the cloud without Xcode or Android Studio on your machine (Which is honestly really handy)
    • Useful for cross-platform teams or CI/CD automation.

  2. Live Updates:

    • Push updates to your app using Ionic Deploy without resubmitting to the App Store or Google Play.
    • Works well with Capacitor by updating web assets (`www/` folder).

  3. Version and Channel Management:

    • Manage multiple versions and deploy environments (e.g., development, staging, production).
    • Control who receives which update and when.

  4. CI/CD Pipelines:

    • Automate builds, testing, and deployment of mobile apps.
    • Integrate with GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket, etc.

  5. Native Configurations:

    • Set native build options like app icons, splash screens, and signing credentials in the Appflow dashboard.

What happened?

All Appflow features and services will be sunset effective December 31, 2027.

Usual story of acquisition which lead to a product being retired.

Here are some alternatives

Appflow Native Build Alternatives

  • Bitrise: Full CI/CD tooling that encompasses testing, builds, and native app store deployments. Does not provide out-of-the-box support for Capacitor, but Bitrise pipelines can be configured to support Capacitor applications.
  • Codemagic: Provides customizable pipelines that support testing, builds, and native app store deployments. Offers official documentation for building a Capacitor application.
  • VoltBuilder: Offers native builds and releases with out-of-the-box support for Capacitor and Cordova.

Live update alternatives

  • Capawesome: Offers similar functionality to the capacitor/live-updates service, which includes channel management, differential download support, code signing, and manual update logic.
  • Capgo: Offers similar functionality to the capacitor/live-updates service, including channel management, code signing, and manual update logic.

So what now?

I don’t know. I personnaly will focus most of my effort to use Expo instead. It was already a cool piece of tech but sometime a bit of an overkill, because you need a separate code base for your app (I mean in theory you could write all your code in React Native but yeah… we all know that’s not very common and not something I’d choose for now.)

Thought I like the Voldbuilder, looks like a nice product. Future will tell what will happen with this tech.